


carve a little space

by orphan_account



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Office, Domestic Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 08:33:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8972230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Taylor Hall reappears in Adam’s life as a speech bubble from an unlisted number.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hockeycaptains](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hockeycaptains/gifts).



Adam wakes up to a face full of morning breath. Taylor is a notorious mouth breather, there he is, head resting on the other pillow, breath foul enough to awaken the death.

“Wake the fuck up and turn off your alarm,” Adam grumbles.

Taylor crawls out of their warm cocoon of blankets and grabs his phone. Drake finally stops crooning to some girl how he can love her better.

Adam manages to doze while Taylor showers, but wakes up again when Taylor comes back into the room to get dressed.

Watching Taylor dress is a process that Adam only half-pays attention to. It’s a familiar sight. The same lines of motion Adam had run his hands all over last night are moving in reverse, putting on a shirt instead of taking it off, stepping into jeans instead of tumbling out of them.

“Don’t wait up tonight,” Taylor says as he comes back to the bed. He presses his minty fresh lips to Adam’s forehead.

“'kay,” Adam croaks and rolls over to go back to sleep.

 

Taylor Hall reappears in Adam’s life as a speech bubble from an unlisted number.

_hey it’s taylor, from hs, heard u had a fold out couch want to put a buddy up for a bit?_

Adam had always had a hard time saying no to Taylor.

Taylor moves in with a handful of boxes, a big suitcase, and two extra large meat lover supremes. “For the trouble I’m causing you,” Taylor says as he hands over the pizzas. “How’ve you been, man? It’s been too long.”

Adam has done okay since high school.

He hasn’t done, like, great or anything since going to college and getting a degree, but he has a job and he pays his rent on time and that's almost enough to stop up all the yearning the yawning hole in his chest does on the regular.

As monotonously as he knew how, Adam says, “Better now that you’re here.”

“You’re a flatterer, Rico. Too good with words for your own good.”

 

‘A bit’ in Taylor speak turns a few weeks into a couple months. ‘A bit’ doesn’t seem to have a set end date. In fact, it’s starting to seem like the phrase itself has fallen into a wormhole where time and space are irrelevant.

 

True to his word, Taylor doesn’t come home from work in time for dinner. Adam makes some stir fry, and leaves the rest on the stove for Taylor. He eats dinner on the couch he and Taylor had scooped up from Greenie. It’s a pretty solid second hand couch.

The TV movie he’s watching is unintelligible. Adam gets up to grab a beer halfway through just for something to do. 

More nights than night they have dinner together. It's strange to think about Taylor fitting into his regular day to day routine, but lo and behold, Adam was kind of missing him tonight or whatever. Taylor would probably have something ridiculous to say about this TV movie. 

 

The sex is good. Adam imagines a younger version of himself probably wouldn’t be able to believe his future-current-self’s good fortune.

You get regular sex when you’re too lazy to pick up, and when you do manage to score you get to have even more sex.

It’s a pretty sweet deal, and Adam isn’t knocking on that, but Adam hasn’t really been scoring with anyone other than Taylor for what feels like months. It’s been too long and Adam’s lost his game. Taylor has ruined him. Fuck that guy.

 

At 10:20 AM Saturday morning, Adam’s phone starts buzzing. He checks his messages but it’s just a keyboard mash of letters from Taylor. He holds his phone and stares as the messages appear, until he realizes that his phone is buzzing out S.O.S. in Morse code. There had been a _phase_ in high school when Taylor had only wanted to pass notes written in only dots and dashes. Adam remembers learning Morse for this nerd.

Adam doesn’t crawl out of bed immediately. He let's Taylor sweat this out for a little while longer.

After a few minutes, Adam opens the bedroom door as loudly as he can and walked into the living room. He had wanted to give Taylor some privacy on his Skype date with his bestie, but apparently it wasn’t meant to be. “Taylor, some guy from your office wants you. You left your phone in the bedroom and it's been going crazy.”

“Must be that web developer I’ve been looking for, I better take this,” Taylor says to Jordan. “I’ll talk to you later, Ebs. Stay alive out there, all alone, in the wilderness without my KD dinners to keep you warm.”

Jordan’s tinny voice sounds indignant, but Taylor just waves and hangs up.

“Web developer? Really?”

“You caught me by surprise!” Taylor laughs.

Adam grins and shuffles into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. “You told me to come get you. ”

“I didn’t expect you to actually come get me.”

Taylor trails after Adam. His hands brush the hem of Adam’s t-shirt, fingers tugging and teasing at the waistband of his sweats playfully. 

“I’ll always come back for you,” Adam finds himself saying.

Taylor's fingers stop dancing along the hem of Adam's shirt and settle like ten tiny points of warm along the small of Adam's back. Adam watches the coffee maker percolate with much more interest than it actually warrants. Taylor doesn’t meet his eye, but he doesn’t bother hiding his pleased grin from Adam either when Adam turns to pass him a cup of coffee. 

“Thanks, Adam,” Taylor says. The handle is chipped, but Taylor’s thumb fits over the groove perfectly, a happy coincidence.

 

Seeing Taylor again after so long is like returning to your hometown after spending some time away. The new strip mall, the half-finished park down the street, that stuff was bound to be new and unfamiliar. 

Adam is almost positive that Taylor didn’t know how to give head like this when they were in high school together. He sucks dick like he doesn’t need to breathe, his lips red and his eyes half glazed with tears as he goes down on Adam and doesn’t _stop_ until he’s almost choking. Adam feels like he’s choking too. He can’t keep his hands still. They have a mind of their own, tugging at Taylor’s hair, running along the span of his shoulders, grasping at the sheets, all done in the futile pursuit of some kind of relief from from the way Taylor keeps him on the edge.

But Taylor’s self-satisfied grin when Adam finally comes in his mouth is a familiar sight. Guess it was true what they say about how the more things changed the more things stayed the same.

 

In English 11, Ms. Penelope had, unfortunately, been obsessed with _Waiting for Godot_.

“The characters wait for Godot, but the process of waiting is also experienced by the reader, the audience. That’s you! You’re waiting too, and that excruciating anticipation,” she had said. “is a metaphor.” They should write a play about Adam waiting for things instead. It would involve way more sex and way less dead dog metaphors.

He’s sitting with Taylor at a burger joint. The paper lining the basket their burgers and fries arrived in has long since turned translucent.

There's a tiny pool of mayo and ketchup in Taylor's basket, and it’s disgusting, but somehow it’s not as gross as it could be. Adam can't exactly fault that weird pool of goo for making Taylor happy.

“Thanks again, for you know, the swift rescue this morning. Ebs was nagging me about moving out again, but I told him I had a good thing going, uh, living with you.”

“You just don’t want to buy furniture,” Adam says. The memory of doing battle with his IKEA bed frame still haunts him.

Taylor smiles, wide and bright. “Ah, you caught me.”

If only, Adam thinks, and then smoothly pushes that thought away. It’s not like that, he reminds himself. “I get it. You’re invested now that you’ve paid for half of the new couch and some of the kitchen stuff.”

“Yeah.”

“But I’d help you move if you wanted, and we can figure out the couch and stuff.”

Taylor looks surprised, like Adam’s offer was something he hadn’t considered before. Moving across the country was pretty exhausting, and Taylor has been working hard to make sure that he settled into transferring offices smoothly, but did he seriously think he was just going to live with Adam forever?

It’s not like living with Taylor was awful.

Some time between high school and now, he had learned how to share space with others. He helped clean the bathroom and hardly left any dishes in the sink although half the couch was hidden under a pile of his coats. He went on grocery runs with Adam and cooked for the both of them semi-regularly, standing in front of the stove shaking it to Bieber often enough that Adam knew all the words to "Company".

After the first month, Taylor had stopped sleeping on the fold out. There was no point pretending that he wasn’t sleeping in Adam’s bed most nights anyway. He’d shoved his things into any spare space Adam had left in his dresser like they were actually doing it. ‘It’ being, like, you know. They never really talked about it. But if you turned your head sideways and removed all context, it would seem like Taylor made a pretty decent boyfriend, if anyone was asking.

Which they weren’t.

“Uh, I can, start looking?” Taylor says.

Adam shrugs and drops the subject.

 

The night was young when they leave the burger place so Adam let’s Taylor herd him into a bar.

“It’s a Saturday! Live a little,” Taylor says loudly over the crush of people.

There’s this guy who’s checking Adam out from across the bar. He’s a solid six with nice shoulders and an inviting smile that said he’d be willing to go all night long. Adam manages to make eye contact with him a few times before Taylor suddenly wants to sit on Adam’s other side. To see the game better, he says. I’m really invested in the New Jersey Devils’ season, he says.

Adam is a little irritated, but the game actually does look interesting. It’s pretty crowded in this local watering hole, so for all he knows, All Nighter was making eyes at someone behind Adam.

It’s impossible to hear the TV, so they watch the Devils-Pens game without commentary. The only noise they can really hear is the hum of conversation in the background. There’s barely any space at the bar, so they're press together real tight. Taylor smells good, faded cologne and the indeterminate sweet soapy smell of indie shampoos, the kind made from tea tree oil or something. Sidney Crosby scores an improbable goal again. Dimly, Adam feels, more than hears, Taylor make an appreciative noise.

After the game ends, Taylor turns to him with wide eyes and a wicked grin. “Adam,” Taylor says. “Adam.”

“What?”

“I need to go to the bathroom,” Taylor says significantly.

 

Adam’s stomach drops like that rush before a rollercoaster nosedive when he follows Taylor into the men’s room a few minutes later.

“Do you want to move out?” Adam blurts out.

Taylor doesn’t immediately respond. He pulls Adam into an empty stall and says, “Not really” like an afterthought while he unbuttons Adam’s jean with care. Taylor is running his tongue along Adam’s dick, no pressure, just the teasing wet press of his tongue, when the bathroom is suddenly flooded with noise.  
They freeze.

By the time the urinal is flushed and the door opens and closes again, Adam is no longer hard. It's kind of a mood killer having to listen to someone else pee, the sour tang of anxiety at being caught at odds with the bubbly sweet feeling of being near someone eager enough to blow you.

“We need to talk,” Adam whispers.

Taylor sighs. He’s still on his knees and he kisses the head of Adam’s dick petulantly in a ‘no hard feelings but I’m disappointed in how the night turned out’ kind of way before tucking Adam back into his pants. He pats Adam’s zipper like he’s making sure the package is secure before he stands up.

“All done? Do you two need a moment alone together?” Adam asks.

“It’s polite to say goodbye to lost opportunities,” Taylor replies primly. “Okay, we’re talking. Do you want me to move out?”

“No.”

“Then what do you want from me?”

Adam stares. He hadn't expected this to be so easy. He thought Taylor was going to duck, dodge, dive, and duck around this conversation, one that he's been avoiding for months, but instead he's asking the kind of questions that Adam hasn't been brave enough to find answers for yet. “I’m not sure,” Adam says after a long pause. He's been more worried about the conversation and avoiding the conversation that now that it's actually happening he's not sure what exactly he's supposed to say. “Do you, I dunno, want to go steady with me?”

Taylor has his thinking face on. It looks kind of goofy, his lips all twisted up in thought, and his eyes far off, but it makes Adam feel impossibly fond. This is Taylor, who sings while he cooks and leaves his laundry all over the couch and kisses Adam like he's running out of air when he comes home from work on time. Loving someone isn’t about collecting random bits of trivia about them, but it’s easy to collect those bits when you do love them. 

"Sure," Taylor says. "Let's make it official." 

 


End file.
